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Amid federal uncertainty, states confront opioid crisis

The Hill: State lawmakers have considered about 1,000 measures in the past year aimed at confronting the mounting opioid epidemic, as heroin use spikes and overdoses claim thousands of lives across the country.

At the same time, states — and members of Congress — are worried that a draft Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid programs aimed at addiction treatment and prevention.

The scale and scope of the opioid addiction crisis has startled lawmakers in recent years, even as crime tied to the illegal drug trade has fallen to all-time lows. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in January that more than 52,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2015, and nearly two-thirds of those cases involved opioids.

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